Vanity Fair - Page 225/573

His courage was prodigious. "Boney attack us!" he cried. "My dear

creature, my poor Emmy, don't be frightened. There's no danger. The

allies will be in Paris in two months, I tell you; when I'll take you

to dine in the Palais Royal, by Jove! There are three hundred thousand

Rooshians, I tell you, now entering France by Mayence and the

Rhine--three hundred thousand under Wittgenstein and Barclay de Tolly,

my poor love. You don't know military affairs, my dear. I do, and I

tell you there's no infantry in France can stand against Rooshian

infantry, and no general of Boney's that's fit to hold a candle to

Wittgenstein. Then there are the Austrians, they are five hundred

thousand if a man, and they are within ten marches of the frontier by

this time, under Schwartzenberg and Prince Charles. Then there are the

Prooshians under the gallant Prince Marshal. Show me a cavalry chief

like him now that Murat is gone. Hey, Mrs. O'Dowd? Do you think our

little girl here need be afraid? Is there any cause for fear, Isidor?

Hey, sir? Get some more beer."

Mrs. O'Dowd said that her "Glorvina was not afraid of any man alive,

let alone a Frenchman," and tossed off a glass of beer with a wink

which expressed her liking for the beverage.

Having frequently been in presence of the enemy, or, in other words,

faced the ladies at Cheltenham and Bath, our friend, the Collector, had

lost a great deal of his pristine timidity, and was now, especially

when fortified with liquor, as talkative as might be. He was rather a

favourite with the regiment, treating the young officers with

sumptuosity, and amusing them by his military airs. And as there is one

well-known regiment of the army which travels with a goat heading the

column, whilst another is led by a deer, George said with respect to

his brother-in-law, that his regiment marched with an elephant.

Since Amelia's introduction to the regiment, George began to be rather

ashamed of some of the company to which he had been forced to present

her; and determined, as he told Dobbin (with what satisfaction to the

latter it need not be said), to exchange into some better regiment

soon, and to get his wife away from those damned vulgar women. But

this vulgarity of being ashamed of one's society is much more common

among men than women (except very great ladies of fashion, who, to be

sure, indulge in it); and Mrs. Amelia, a natural and unaffected person,

had none of that artificial shamefacedness which her husband mistook

for delicacy on his own part. Thus Mrs. O'Dowd had a cock's plume in

her hat, and a very large "repayther" on her stomach, which she used to

ring on all occasions, narrating how it had been presented to her by

her fawther, as she stipt into the car'ge after her mar'ge; and these

ornaments, with other outward peculiarities of the Major's wife, gave

excruciating agonies to Captain Osborne, when his wife and the Major's

came in contact; whereas Amelia was only amused by the honest lady's

eccentricities, and not in the least ashamed of her company.